The Best of Barlow

For ten years Frank Barlow wrote the finest and funniest fishing column this country has ever seen. It appeared in Angler's Mail every week and was the reason why thousands of people bought the magazine, and the first page they turned to when they opened it.

Everyone wanted to know what kind of grueller Frank had endured at the weekend, having drawn like a man with no hands, and sat rapless again for five hours in freezing weather on another cesspit with a face as long as a gas man's mac.

We loved it because we'd all been there and bought the tee-shirt, and reading Frank's wonderfully wise and witty accounts of his frequent disasters and days of hope that ended in despair somehow soothed the pain of our own suffering.

Some people are just born to make you laugh, and Frank was one of them. It was in the things he said and in the words he wrote. He had it in spades, and this book is a tribute to him for the pleasure he has brought to his thousands of fans.

He was taken from us at the age of 53, leaving a void that no one has been able to fill. But now his words, plucked from those much-loved columns, will live on for future generations in a rich and golden legacy of fond memories of Frank.